It starts with the tremors. Friday morning, the kids are off to school, and I am planning to leave soon to test drive a car for Mom and Dad. I am just about to hop in the shower when Mom asks me to come and help her put Dad to bed. Put Dad to bed? It's only 9am in the morning, and he never naps in the morning. I go into their room and Mom said, "Dad keeps shaking." "You mean he's cold?" "No, he's not cold but he keeps shaking." And suddenly I see it. As Dad is sliding into bed, his body starts shaking. Not his hands, legs, or feet, just his body. It lasts for a few seconds, then stops. Several seconds later, it happens again.
The nurse for Dad's PCP has told us that whenever we have questions, or if anything happens and we're not sure of what to do, to call them. So I call in. The nurse is on vacation, but we get another nurse, who takes down a few stats, then asks me to describe what is going on. I answer all of her questions the best I can. No, he wasn't hungry, he had a full breakfast. No he didn't lose consciousness, no he didn't become incontinent. The conversation lasts for several minutes, and during this time Mom comes out and tells me that Dad has fallen asleep and the tremors are happening less and less. At one point he suddenly wakes and becomes quite agitated, insisting he has to go the ER, and he starts shaking again, but Mom manages to calm him down and he falls asleep again, and the tremors fade again. All told he sleeps for about 2 hours before he wakes naturally, gets up to use the bathroom and gets dressed. He seems totally fine. The nurse tells us to take him in to get some bloodwork done, just so they can check his thyroid, but otherwise we are to keep an eye on him over the weekend, and call in if it starts up again. Needless to say, all plans are put on hold as we take Dad to the lab, eat lunch and put him to bed again.
The weekend passes peacefully enough, except that Saturday night Dad gets up to go the bathroom, then gets up multiple times in a 90 minute period, to go to the the bathroom. Now anyone who has done this knows that after the first episode you're not going to get anything. He finally settles down for a couple of hours, before getting up again for a legitimate episode. He sleeps peacefully enough until early morning, when he gets up to go but doesn't make it and has an accident. Mom cleans him up, gets him dressed, and they come down for breakfast. I leave to walk Shep and when I come back they are gone. I ask Mike if they are already done eating (??) but he says no, Dad had another accident.
To me this is very unusual because prior to this day Dad has had only one accident, and that was after refusing to go for the entire day because he "had just gone and didn't need to again." After that incident we were careful to insist that he go at regular intervals. He has gotten up in the middle of the night to go all on his own without any issues.
When the nurse checks in today, I tell her about the weekend, and say today was fine with no accidents. I also told her we have taken Dad totally off caffeine because he had been drinking a lot of tea Saturday and that may have contributed to his restlessness. She calls back to let us know the PCP approves of our decision and to let her know if Dad becomes incontinent again because they will want to check him out, maybe for a UTI. Tonight while Mike and I are having dinner Mom comes down and tells us Dad had another accident. Apparently when she came down to chat he shut AND locked the bedroom door. Then when he had to go he wanted to let her know but couldn't get the door open again, and by the time all was said and done it was too late.
This brings up another new thing and that is Dad's sudden lack of independence with toileting. He has never had any trouble when having to pee, he just goes and takes care of business. But in the last couple of days after his accident Mom will ask him, "if you had to go why didn't you just go?" and he will say," well I needed your help undressing." There is really nothing Mom can say at this point although she is figuratively clutching her head because none of this makes any sense. In any case we are calling the PCP tomorrow.
Nobody in this household know enough about dementia to figure out what, if anything in particular is behind the sudden downturn of so many things. I could trace it back to Monday afternoon, when they went for a walk, and suddenly Dad got exhausted and refused to walk anymore, prompting Mom to call me and ask for a ride home. He was was hot and sweaty because he was overdressed for the weather. For the rest of the week he was fussy and didn't sleep well. I asked the nurse if continued bad sleep could cause the tremors and she said it was entirely possible, but does anyone ever really know?
Last weird thing to happen today is taking of meds. Dad swallows his pills like a champ. He tosses them back all at once, takes a sip of water and down it goes. This morning Mom hands him his pills and a minute later she turns around and he's dropped them into his water glass. Filled with water. I wonder if it's just a one off, but nope, this evening it happens again. Now we will have to give him his pills, and watch him, prompting him every second until the pills are down.
There are so many inconsistencies in Dad's behavior even before this week that it's tempting to see the last few days as more noise. He gets dressed perfectly fine in the morning when he wakes up by himself. He knows how to put on his slipper sandals by opening the ankle strap. Yet when he comes into the house from a walk or an outing, he is simply unable to remember how to put the slipper sandals back on, and tries to force his foot into it without opening any of the 3 straps. When he's on the first floor and has to go to the bathroom it's a quick efficient trip, but when he's upstairs in the master bedroom he has to almost completely undress before going because he thinks he must do this before having a bowel movement, and apparently the upstairs bathroom is always where one goes to have a bowel movement so it must be where he takes off almost everything. In an environment like this, *I* want to discern a practical cause behind the sudden decline in physical functions but am wondering if it just more of the same weirdness that is Dad. I realize how predictable his quirks have become and now the thought of that predictability being shaken up is not yet acceptable.
Chin up. :)
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